Servicing the democratic process through answering Parliamentary Questions (PQs) is a core responsibility of all Department of Finance staff.
The time spent responding to a question, and the number of staff involved in preparing the response, varies significantly depending on the complexity and importance of the topic, whether the response is to be written or oral, and whether information required for the response is readily available.
Accordingly, my officials have not estimated an average cost for the process of responding to PQs.